=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Amy Today A text-file magazine for all Amiga lovers Volume #4, Issue #3, October 30th =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Editor : John Rydell Writers: Mike Hooper and Mark Greffen Address all correspondence to: "Amy Today" C/O John Rydell GEnie address: J.Rydell1 640 Willowglen Rd. (#54790) Santa Barbara, CA 93105 Plink address: J*Rydell GEnie discussion in category #2, topic #29 Plink discussion in Section #2 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: 1. A Message From the Editor John Rydell 2. Distributing "Amy Today" John Rydell 3. Amiga Happenings John Rydell 4. It's WHAT kind of Ware? Mike Hooper 5. Fred Fish 159-162 John Rydell 6. Leatherneck Mark Greffen 7. Trading Galore!! John Rydell 8. Newsletter Trading John Rydell 9. Advertising John Rydell 10. In the Future John Rydell =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= A Message From The Editor: Once again, I'm a couple days late with an issue of Amy Today. I have had too much to do lately and this is why the issues are not as consistently on time as they once were. This issue contains the usual index which is published every three issues. I hope that everyone is enjoying the option of looking up particular articles. My advertising rates are both cheap and negotiable. Please contact me if you would like to advertise or if you think you know someone who might. I am losing quite a bit of money on Amy Today because of access time and postage. It would be nice to at least break even for my efforts. Like always, I am looking for reader-support in the way of articles or short programs you would like to share with the Amiga community. If you would like to contribute please contact me at one of the locations printed in the magazine's cover/title section. All good PD/shareware software will also be mentioned or reviewed if it is sent to Amy Today. John Rydell (Editor) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Distributing "Amy Today": Amy Today is file-based magazine which has been copyrighted by John Rydell. I am allowing everyone to freely distribute it as long as they give credit to Amy Today for anything taken from the magazine. I also request that the magazine, itself, remains "AS IS" when being distributed. Please do not modify it in any way if you are going to distribute it. About Distributing: Please upload Amy Today EVERYWHERE! This magazine simply will not flourish if it is not uploaded whenever possible. Every issue is kept under 15,000 bytes ARCed so that upload/download time should never be a problem. So, please, if you have the chance spread the magazine around the country! Give a copy to your friend! Keep Amy Today alive and going strong! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Amiga Happenings: (John Rydell) Commodore- 1.3 is finally shipping. Numerous people in my area have received their copy. I hope to get mine pretty soon. Amiga Happenings is a column dedicated to giving you information on what is happening in the Amiga community. Some of the information could possibly be wrong due to the fact that I am trying to get early information. I do not in any way guarantee that the information will be accurate although I will try my hardest to protect the innocent. >>If you have some new information you would like to share please submit it to Amy Today. ############################################################### # Amy Today Trading Galore! Trade public domain or shareware # # software with Amy Today. Look for more information later # # in this issue. --The trade is going strong...participate # # today! # ############################################################### It's WHAT kind of Ware? by Mike Hooper (GRAFIX.M on GEnie) More and more folks are adding some kind of pitch for bucks on the programs they have written. It's an attempt at collecting a few dollars for all the time/effort/money invested in a program they have written. But as more and more people get into doing this, there seems to be a greater misunderstanding of just what each of these tags mean. I've even seen some of the national magazines get things confused. There NEEDS to be a good definition of each term. I offer: Public Domain: Something that you have written and release to the public, free and clear. If you state you release it into the Public Domain, you cannot also state that it cannot be sold. The mere fact that it is in the Public Domain means that you no longer claim any control over it. I've seen DOZENS of files that state the author, "...has released it to the Public Domain. This program cannot be sold or distributed for profit." This is a TRUE contradiction in terms. Maybe like Jumbo Shrimp? Or Military Intelligence? ::grin:: Copyrighted: This is a program that the author retains control and rights to. He may release it into free public distribution, and can attach any restrictions he likes on it. Like, "it may not be sold", "for free distribution on private BBS' only", "you may distribute only if the files in this archive are complete and unmodified", etc. A program or file that contains the proper copyright notice is fully protected by the Federal Copyright Laws. (Note that the *proper* notice is the "circle C" symbol... NOT the (C) characters...and/or the word COPYRIGHT, along with the year and name of the copyright holder.) FreeWare: This REALLY doesn't mean anything. FreeWare in the strictest sense would really be Public Domain. Generally, authors that claim copyright and offer free distribution, call it FreeWare. For a computer user, FreeWare can be some of the best software around. The author generally writes the program for the love of programming, and he distributes it free, just to share his work. A nobler program isn't available! ShareWare: Originally this was a REAL GOOD THING! The author made a true and complete program, including *all* features and options. He copyrighted it and threw it out for free distribution. As a part of his copyrights, he added that "...if you like it and find use for it, pay me for it...," same as you would for any other commercial product, only this one is at one-tenth the price since he doesn't have the overhead the big-boys do. A TRUE "try before you buy" concept. Some authors have made some big bucks with this form of distribution (virtually 100% of those authors are in the MS-DOS world). Lately though, there have been more and more folks calling a crippled version of a program, "Shareware". You get to try SOME of the features or all of them on a limited basis and if you like it you can send some $$$ to the author to get a complete version. I don't think I've *ever* seen a bigger bastardization of a concept than this! (I won't get into the fact that shareware authors really do deserve to be paid for the program you use...it's beyond the scope of this particular article.) Demos: Any program showing what another program will do! Generally it's considered a commercial program by a large software house or distributor. But actually, any program, commercially or shareware distributed, could be considered a demo if it lets you play with the program and get a feel for it, with 1 or more of it's options disabled or limited. If you like it, you send a check for the full product or run right down to the local store. I think 50% of what is being distributed as ShareWare should really fall into the category of DEMOS. So finally a plea to the authors: "Clean up your act!" I can't take any author seriously that says, "This program is released to the public domain. (C) 1988 Joe Blow. You may give this away, but you cannot resell it for a profit." His first statement gives away all rights, the second takes all his rights back, and the third gives away "some" of his rights. Sheesh! Besides, he places his own program in jeopardy should he find himself in a legal battle at some future point. Protect yourself and come across as literate to your users! Know what the fine print means before you place it in your program!! Editor's Note: After reading this article I changed part of my copyright notice. I had been abusing some of the terms, myself. I guess Mike really knows what he's talking about when he says that these terms are being abused. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Fred Fish: Fish recently released disks #155-162 in his public domain library. In the last issue I over-viewed disks 155-158. In this issue 159-162 are looked at. In future issues I will try to condense these descriptions so that they do not take up so much space. I'm not sure who originally created the text for this file. It might have been Fred Fish himself. It might have been someone on Usenet. To whomever credit is due, it is given. ---Disk #159--- Free: A little command to put in your c directory that returns memory status and number of tasks currently served by EXEC. Includes source. Author: Joerg Anslik MidiTools: A group of several different utility programs for those who run a Midi system. Binary only. Author: Jack Deckard StarChart: Nicely done intuition based program to display and identify about 600 stars, galaxies and nebulae visible in the Northern hemisphere. Version 1.2, includes source. Author: Ray R. Larson TaskControl: Nicely done task-handling program allowing you to put to sleep, kill or change priorities of the all the currently loaded tasks. Also potentially GURU-producing, so be careful what tasks you kill, change priorities of, etc. Handy window sizer will reduce it almost to an icon to hang around until you want to use it. Binary only. Author: J. Martin Hippele TUC: "The Ultimate Clock". Another window title clock/memory minder. This one is in 132 columns! Also gives the free memory on drives DF0, DF1 & DF2. Includes source. Author: Joerg Anslik ---Disk #160--- Calls: A little utility to help analyze the flow of a C-program by laying out the functions called in a hierarchical manner. Author: Originally from Usenet with major revisions by Kevin Braunsdorf, Amiga port by George MacDonald Check: A useful little utility for finding structural errors in C-source code. Many command-line options. Version 1.03, binary only. Author: Keith Elbertson Dis: A 68000 disassembler, written in assembly, this is an update to the version on disk #128. Includes source. Author: Greg Lee with enhancements by Willi Kusche DMouse: A versatile screen & mouse blanker, auto window activator, mouse accelerator, popcli, pop window to front, push window to back, etc, widget. Version 1.09, includes source. Update to version on disk number 145. Author: Matt Dillon DWIP: "Daisy Wheel IFF Printer". A graphics printing utility that allows the printing of IFF pictures on a daisy wheel printer. Includes source. Author: Ken Van Camp M4A: UNIX M4 look-alike macro processor intended as a front end for Ratfor, Pascal, and other languages that do not have a built-in macro processing capability. Pd M4 reads standard input, the processed text is written on the standard output. Author: Ozan S. Yigit (oz) MemoPad: A shareware intuition-based memo reminder program. Nicely done. Update to version on disk #146, version 1.2, binary only. Author: Michael Griebling NeuralNets: A neural network example using the generalized back- propagation delta rule for learning, specifically applied to the tabula rasa Little Red Riding Hood instance. Author: Josiah C. Hoskins ---Disk #161--- Friends: Cute little screen hack with command-line options to keep your mouse pointer company when you step away. Includes source. Author: Michael Warner Getsprite: A simple little program to convert Dpaint brushes into C-source. Binary only. Author: Michael Warner IncRev: A handy little program that will automatically increment the revision number of a program every time it is recompiled. Binary only. Author: Bryan Ford LGZ: A Map generator/editor for the LGZ game. Not extremely useful if you don't happen to play that game, but good source example of intuition interfacing. Version 0.1. Authors: Lars and Henrik Clausen Mackie: A versatile cli/macro-key initiator based on POPCLI with a unique method of "screen-blanking". I won't say more, just try it! Version 1.1, includes source. Author: Thomas Rokicki Nag: A shareware appointment calendar with it's own editor and a unique 'nagging' feature utilizing the Amiga's voice and audio devices.Version 1.6, binary only. Author: Richard Lee Stockton Perl: Practical Extraction and Report Language, an interpreted language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information. Author: Larry Wall VRTest: Another anti-virus utility that allows visual inspection of ram starting a $7E7FE, ram cleaning, bootblock inspection and vector monitoring/reseting. Written entirely in assembly language. Version 3.2, binary only. Author: Babar Khan XBoot: A very simple utility to convert a boot block into an executable file so you can use your favorite debugger (Wack, Dis, etc.) to study it. Includes source. Author: Francois Rouaix ---Disk #162--- Avi: A workalike version of the UNIX vi editor for the amiga. Though not especially recommended for beginners, designed for those of you who may have the vi commands permanently hard-coded into your fingertips! Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Peter Nestor CLI_Utilities: This directory contains several subdirectories with small utilities, collected from various sources, that are only usable from the CLI. See the Readme file for further information. Some include source. Author: Various Dark: A small graphics and animation demo. Includes source. Author: Phil Robertson Flow2Troff: A little utility to convert from New Horizons Software "FLOW" files to UNIX "troff" files, suitable for printing on any troff-compatible laser printer. Version 1.0, includes source and a sample "FLOW" file. Author: Daniel Barrett LabyrinthII: A shareware role-playing text adventure game similar in operation to the Infocom text adventures. Includes source. Author: Russell Wallace Iffar: Maintains archives of Interchange File Format (IFF) FORM, CAT and LIST files in a manner that complies with the IFF CAT specification. Version 1.2, includes source. Author: Karl Lehenbauer SetPALorNTSC: A couple of utility programs for testing the suitability of a developed program in either the PAL or NTSC environments. Includes source and a sample program. Author: Peter Kittel TES: "The Electronic Slave" adds a gadget strip to the top of the cli window to perform such functions as device directories, info, run ED, and time. Currently, assignments are hardcoded but not difficult to change if you own a compiler. Version 1.1, includes source. Author: Joerg Anslik UnknownGirl: Another small musical piece similar in execution to "Synthemania" on disk number 153. Binary only. Author: Holger Lubitz =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Leatherneck: (Mark Greffen) If you are the type of person who balks upon hearing the word "arcade" then read no further. Leatherneck is definitely an arcade game. This "Rambo style" shootem' up game has the one basic feature the arcade game fanatic has come to expect, a high score list in which the top three scores on that list can be saved to the game disk. Leatherneck, however, differs from most computer arcade games in that an adapter is available that will allow four people to play the game via joysticks. Leatherneck also features pleasant music that does not grate on your nerves, smooth scrolling, well drawn graphics and very responsive joystick control. The objective of the game is to fight your way through the jungle and rescue your buddies who are being held prisoner. Sound familiar? To complete your task, you are furnished with a heavy machine gun, a light machine gun and grenades. Because these weapons do eventually run out of ammunition, the player must use them sparingly as the ammunition boxes are few and far between. Despite the basic mindlessness of this game I found it to be infuriatingly difficult as for every man you kill, another two appear. This game must be played cautiously with slow advancement. Leatherneck definitely does supply a respite from adventure games and is, all in all, a well put together package that any arcade game maniac will love. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Trading Galore: First we had a picture trade. Users were urged to send in a disk full of pictures and, in return, were given a disk full of the best pictures that had been collected so far. The picture trade was, and will hopefully continue to be, a GREAT success! Because of this, I have decided to open up a new trade which allows everyone to participate--not just those of us with pictures. Send me a disk full of anything you want. (Music, Art, Animations, Sound files, and Public Domain/Shareware software...anything!) Include a SASE (please remember the stamps!), and I will send your disk back to you filled with whatever you want. Just tell me whether you want music, art, software (you can even specify a specific pd/shareware program but I can't guarantee that I have it), and I'll send it back. On request, I'll even send disk copies of all issues of Amy Today. Send your disk and a SASE to: Amy Today's Trading Galore 640 Willowglen Rd. Santa Barbara, CA 93105 <> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Newsletter Trading: (From Issue 1-1) I am looking for Amiga user groups who would like to trade newsletters with me. Every month I will send you three issues of Amy Today and, in return, I would like a copy of your newsletter. I know a lot of this trading takes place and would love to get involved. The more articles and information that I have about the Amiga, the better I can make Amy Today. If you are interested please drop me a line on GEnie, Plink, or by mail. I would really appreciate a sample newsletter and will mail you Amy Today in return. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Advertising: Amy Today is open to advertising at VERY affordable prices. Large and small companies both have a great opportunity for quality advertising while supporting a public domain Amiga magazine. If you are interested please write to: Amy Today ATTN Advertising 640 Willowglen Rd. Santa Barbara, CA 93105 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= In the Future: A review of Bard's Tale II A review of Professional Page 1.1 A review of Modula-2 A review of a CLtd 33 meg hard drive A review of a Supra 2400 baud modem An interview with a shareware programmer Maybe even more interviews, also And hopefully numerous articles from you--the readers. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "Amy Today" is copyright 1988 by John Rydell. Portions of the magazine may be reprinted but the content of this magazine may NOT be changed without the expressed consent of John Rydell. Yet everyone is encouraged to distribute it AS IS. Please give credit to "Amy Today" as well as to the individual author when reprinting material. "Amy Today" as well as any of its authors are not responsible for any damages that occur because of errors or omissions. Articles reprinted from other newsletters, as noted, are not property of Amy Today but are under the control of their original authors. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=